Man, I love the tone you’re setting with that artwork. It’s one of those games I’d pick up on a whim, solely because of how it looks. I Like how you tap into the whole pulp aspect of it too, with the setup of those narratives. “The stage is set!”, as you say. I don’t really understand the game’s vocabulary yet, but I’m looking forward to more updates. :)
Oops, I copy-pasted from the blog interface without paying attention to what I was doing. Thanks for pointing that out. The original post has been edited.
Holy Moly, that’s a lot of pieces! Looks great!
That looks great, Jason. I love the cards- the illustration style reminds of the original ‘Dan Dare’ comics for some reason (probably the muted tones and theatrical lighting).
The map looks jarring compared to the cards though. Is that intentional or a work in progress?
I’m looking forward to seeing this develop. It’s not surprising that the word 'Kickstarter" happens soon in the comments.
Jason, I’m floored. Where do I buy this yesterday? Just out of curiosity, I’m familiar with an older SPI game called ‘Spies’ and for some reason, I’m getting a bit of a vibe of that in looking at the board/chits/setting. Any real corrolation or am I just being random?
Looks like a lot of changes since the last iteration. Like the old art maybe slightly better, but still awesome! I’ve been watching this game like a hawk since I first started gaming. Hurry up and Kickstart this thing.
The map has gone through many iterations at this point, but it’s still a work in progress. I’m super envious of the hand-painted map that Flying Frog commissioned for Fortune & Glory – ideally I would want something more along those lines. Really, I’d want someone like UniversalHead to tackle the graphic design from top to bottom. I can make things look passable, but I’m not a pro.
I’m not familiar with Spies, though I did play a lot of the old SPI games from the 80s. The art on nearly all of the cards is taken right from old pulp magazine covers from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, manipulated a bit, and run through a Photoshop filter. That vintage art style is really the primary inspiration for the game.
Go talk to Victory Point Games. They’d be perfect for you.
— Alan
This Dr. Who Solo Adventure game is pretty addictive. And brutal. I’ve done two adventures so far. One involved fending off a Sycorax invasion of 12th millenium Future Roman Earth (which was a bloodbath - not because of the Sycorax, who I managed to run from or talk down when I ran into them, but because of alien lizardmen ambassadors and random wandering robots, all more numerous and brawnier than my party, and my talk, evade, etc rolls kept failing). The other involved shutting down Executive Halpen’s plot to suppress the Ood brain…on the cargo ship falling into the star, which was complicated not by encounters with Halpen - that only happened at the very end - but by having to repair a critical computer core malfunction and the dramatically accelerated timeline forced by the special rules at that adventure. Fortunately, I did succeed, but both were pretty down to the wire.
Love the art on the cards! Top drawer for sure. The map needs some work though, it’s bubblegum color scheme doesn’t mach well with the cards. Maybe something a bit more film grain and sepia would fit in better.
Hopefully we get to try this sucker at the next LutesCon!!!
Out of curiousity, is the art commercial product appropriate? Did you license them from somewhere, or are the companies dead and the art in public domain or something like that?
davidf
5313
I love the narrative aspect of this one so much, and how it builds into this natural season story arch I want to do a AAR in story form for this! I think it would be fun, and help others see how it evolves over the season. It really feels like a single person RPG. Once I’ve done a season or two of this, I want to try the Torchwood expansion. That looks very interesting as well :)
One thought on your story, on the Sycorax invasion, I haven’t faced them yet, but a reminder unless otherwise stated… once you face a opponent in a episode all future encounters will be the same race for that episode.
Yeah, future -enemy- encounters. But the lizardmen and robots were Character encounters.
Looks like FFG will be publishing Merchant of Venus after all. I hope Stronghold got a decent settlement on the whole thing.
The prototype art is all placeholder stuff I pulled off Google image search and manipulated in Photoshop. If I can find a publisher, I imagine the biggest financial hurdle will be commissioning original art for 800+ cards. I’m trying to hone my digital painting chops to the point where I can emulate those old pulp masters, but I have a long way to go.
You might not have to go that far, Jason. Have you seen Ace Detective, the game that Arkham Horror creator Richard Lannius is doing? Apparently, he licensed all the pulp art from Black Mask magazine. You may be able to come to some sort of similar agreement with one of those old rights holders.
Oh, yeah, and the game looks great, by the way. Come a long way since the first time I saw it, all those years ago.
OK so like, who is coming over for Crokinole?
Now that’s a beautiful board, mike. Who did you order from?
